May 8^th at 12:00
Onsite event
in Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Spring 2025 program

Prof. Vytas Bankaitis, Texas A&M University, USA
Lipid-mediated signal transduction: unveiling the role of PITPs in cellular homeostasis and disease
Host: Max Lönnfors (max.lonnfors@abo.fi)

Coffee and sandwich at 11:45, first come first served!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have a lunch and discuss with Prof. Bankaitis after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in a friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

The Bankaitis laboratory is interested in the regulatory interfaces between novel lipid-mediated signal transduction pathways and important cellular functions. The focus of their work is the phosphatidylinositol/ phosphatidylcholine transfer proteins (PITPs), a ubiquitous but enigmatic class of proteins. Ongoing projects in the laboratory derive from a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses biochemical characterization of novel members of the metazoan PITP family, and the application of genetic, molecular and biophysical approaches to detailed structural and functional analyses of PITPs.

Selected publications

A novel bivalent interaction mode underlies a non-catalytic mechanism for Pin1-mediated protein kinase C regulation. Chen XR, Dixit K, Yang Y, McDermott MI, Imam HT, Bankaitis VA, Igumenova TI. Elife. 2024 Apr 30;13:e92884. doi: 10.7554/eLife.92884.

Pathak A, Willis KG, Bankaitis VA, McDermott MI. 2024. Mammalian START-like phosphatidylinositol transfer proteins – Physiological perspectives and roles in cancer biology. Biochim Biophys Acta Mol Cell Biol Lipids. 2024 Oct;1869(7):159529. doi: 10.1016/j.bbalip.2024.159529

Yeh YT, Sona C, Yan X, Li Y, Pathak A, McDermott MI, Xie Z, Liu L, Arunagiri A, Wang Y, Cazenave-Gassiot A, Ghosh A, von Meyenn F, Kumarasamy S, Najjar SM, Jia S, Wenk MR, Traynor-Kaplan A, Arvan P, Barg S, Bankaitis VA, Poy MN. Restoration of PITPNA in Type 2 diabetic human islets reverses pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction. Nat Commun. 2023 Jul 17;14(1):4250. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-39978-1.

Khan D, Nile AH, Tripathi A, Bankaitis VA. 2021. Emerging Prospects for Combating Fungal Infections by Targeting Phosphatidylinositol Transfer Proteins. Int J Mol Sci. 2021 Jun 23;22(13):6754. doi: 10.3390/ijms22136754.

Xie Z, Bankaitis VA. 2022. Phosphatidylinositol transfer protein/planar cell polarity axis regulates neocortical morphogenesis by supporting interkinetic nuclear migration. Cell Rep. 2022 May 31;39(9):110869. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110869.

General information

• You can download and save all the spring 2025 FoS-seminars to your calendar from here: https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars, print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Spring 2025 image credits to Teemu Tuominen: Close up photograph of soil bacteria Streptomyces colonies border.